This is One Good Thing, a weekly column where we tell you about one of the few nice things that happened this week.
Love is real and has taken physical manifestation in the comment section of Cookie Monster’s AMA.
If you’re at all familiar with Reddit you’ll know what AMA means, and if you’re not it stands for “ask me anything,” a subreddit where users can ask celebrities and authoritative figures whatever they want.
This week, Reddit was blessed with the most wholesome AMA from none other than Sesame Street‘s Cookie Monster, and his answers were snappier than a good gingersnap.
The reason for the Cookie Monster takeover was to raise awareness for the Yellow Feather Fund, which “brings educational materials to children in need.”
The comments section was filled with the cutest cookie questions for Cookie Monster that were more than enough to knock the chocolate chip off of anyone’s shoulder. Cookie Monster’s answers made us laugh, he made us cry, and he made us eat cookies. Here are some of the best answers Cookie Monster gifted us.
Reddit comments sections can be a bit divisive, but in this glorious moment, the Reddit community came together to create the most beautiful comments section of all time. It couldn’t have been done without the curation of our lord and savior, Cookie Monster, who covered a plethora of topics in this Q & A.
He gave the best tips on how to clean up when the cookie crumbles:
Redditors absolutely loved having Cookie Monster do an AMA. They were well aware he brought more joy to the site than usual, and asked him to come back. Many users commented that he made their day, and that his comedic skills were under appreciated, a statement with which we totally agree.
This AMA is more pure than water from a regularly cleaned Brita Filter, and we highly recommend that you read the full thread to fill your heart with the joy only Sesame Street could provide.
After the AMA, Cookie Monster shared his thanks on Twitter, but we couldn’t help but notice the “motivational” poster in the background of his photo, if you can really call it that.
Not really sure if the poster is meant to be motivational for Cookie Monster to wait for snack time or if it’s meant to be the cookie trying to hang in there and avoid being eaten. The latter is a pretty pointless objective, because Cookie Monster is bound to devour it.
These comments are sure to make you snicker(doodle).
In this photo from 2012, an Indian girl poses for photographs with an Indian flag at the Indo China border in Bumla [File: Anupam Nath/AP Photo]
China‘s Foreign Ministry has condemned Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the disputed northeastern border state of Arunachal Pradesh.
In a statement released on Saturday, the ministry said it “resolutely opposes” activities by Indian leaders in the region.
Modi’s visit was part of a series of public meetings in the region aimed at garnering support for his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ahead of Indian elections due by May.
Despite recent efforts to improve bilateral ties between both countries, disputes over the mountainous Indo-China border – which triggered a war in 1962 – and the region that China claims as southern Tibet have remained a sensitive issue.
“China urges the Indian side to proceed from the overall situation of bilateral relations, respect China’s interests and concerns, cherish the momentum of improving relations between the two countries, and refrain from any actions that intensify disputes and complicate the border issue,” the ministry said in a statement.
In response, the official spokesperson at India’s foreign ministry said Arunachal Pradesh was “an integral and inalienable part of India”.
“Indian leaders visit Arunachal Pradesh from time to time, as they visit other parts of India. This consistent position has been conveyed to the Chinese side on several occasions.” said the ministry in a statement.
India and China have sought to rebuild trust after an armed standoff over a stretch of the Himalayan border in 2017.
Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping met a number of times last year to give impetus to trade discussions.
But progress, according to Indian government officials and representatives of various Indian trade bodies, has been very slow.
At several moments this week, the unfolding fiasco in Virginia succeeded in being simultaneously the top news story in the New York Times, Washington Post, the cable networks and, come to think of it, POLITICO.
Nicely done, Virginia.
Story Continued Below
As a former state capital reporter in Richmond, I confess to a twinge of perverse pride in seeing my old haunts back in the spotlight, a quarter-century or more after I was there.
The circumstances—by last count four top state officials embroiled in controversy of a racial or sexual nature—are sickening. They are also, let’s face it, mesmerizing, in a way that politics can be when the plot hurtles wildly between drama and farce and the politicians are stripped of their customary veneers of respectability.
Virginia is a state that for historical reasons has always imagined its political institutions and leaders as possessed of special virtue. Now they are known for uncommon vice. With widespread demands for the resignations of both Gov. Ralph Northam, embroiled in controversy over a racist blackface photograph, and Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, an African-American politician facing on-the-record allegations from two women accusing him of violent sexual assault, Virginia state government is facing a comprehensive meltdown.
In part because the state limits governors to a single term, and in part because Virginia politicians in recent decades have played a prominent role in national politics, Northam is the first governor out of the nine elected since 1981 that I do not know personally. Fairfax was still in high school when I left Richmond. Time marches on.
But the cascade of headlines this week reminds me that it marches slowly, at least in the Old Dominion. There are echoes between this week’s uproars involving Northam, Fairfax and attorney general Mark Herring and uproars back in my day involving outsized characters like Charles S. Robb, the former governor and U.S. senator who many once perceived as a future president, and L. Douglas Wilder, the nation’s first elected black governor. The surface details are quite different (and, in the present case, much more disturbing); the torrent of accusations flying against a backdrop of sexual hypocrisy and tortured racial history is quite familiar.
The current spectacle in Richmond, in fact, is the latest incarnation of one of the great themes of Virginia politics: the gap between myth and reality. That gap, of course, in some sense is a feature of politics in all places at all times. But the contradiction has special significance in Virginia, where the tension between heroic reputations and ignoble behavior often touches on race, and where many of the most important Founding Fathers wrote the charter documents of American liberty while invariably owning and sometimes sleeping with slaves.
Let’s not take this too far. I can’t with a straight face make more than the most glancing connection between Ralph Northam and Thomas Jefferson (who following independence served as Virginia’s second governor, after Patrick Henry). The main point is that Virginia—because so much consequential history from colonial times onward has taken place on its soil—has a political culture with an uncommon reverence for its institutions and traditions. That culture also tends to invest its leaders—and governors most of all—with an aura of supreme respectability, even when they emphatically do not deserve it.
The current era of politics, prone to media storms of the sort that threaten to swamp Northam and Fairfax, is especially hostile to heroic myths. But the shock of exposure is greater when—in contrast to more flamboyant and obviously roguish politicians like Donald Trump—the disreputable behavior was obscured by a solemn façade.
Shocking is the mildest word for the image of a man painted in black face posing next to man wearing the white robes and hood of the Ku Klux Klan. Northam apologized for the photo, appearing on his page from his 1984 medical school yearbook. Then he reversed course, saying that photo couldn’t have been him, but that he had once donned blackface while doing a Michael Jackson impersonation. It seemed like his resignation was inevitable, until a woman came forward saying that Fairfax, who would replace Northam, sexually assaulted her in 2004, and many people are no longer rushing to make the trade. Combined with racial controversies involving Herring and Senate Majority Leader Thomas Norment, and Virginia’s gap between respectability and reality has rarely been larger.
People outside the state might understandably conclude: Wow, as recently as 35 years ago in the home of the Confederacy the prejudice was so endemic that flagrant racism of the sort depicted in the yearbook was no big deal.
But that assumption isn’t quite right. I grew up in Upstate New York, and I didn’t begin reporting on state politics until the late 1980s. I’m pretty sure, however, that even in 1984 it would have shocked the sensibilities of many in Virginia’s political and business elite to be confronted with a photograph of the state’s governor in an openly racist pose—even if the photo was taken in 1949, 35 years earlier.
Make no mistake: Virginia does indeed have a not-so-distant past steeped in systemic racial discrimination. But as writers like Frank B. Atkinson (who wrote the political history, “The Dynamic Dominion”) make clear, for the most part in the 20th century did not devolve into open racial warfare of the sort that took place in Mississippi, Alabama and other parts of the Deep South, and which later migrated to major cities of the North. The face of discrimination in Virginia—where leaders in the 1950s and beyond engaged in “massive resistance” to avoid integrating the schools after the Supreme Court’s Brown decision—was more typically understated and shrouded in respectability. It came dressed in the well-starched suits of court house lawyers and pols for the Byrd Machine, which dominated state politics for decades, not the gaudy robes of Klansman.
Respectable establishment racism, of course, is no better and arguably worse than more flamboyant other kinds. One person whose career was organized around this belief was Wilder, whose election to lead the former capital of the Confederacy drew international notice. This is where my own familiarity with the Virginia story becomes firsthand.
In the 1980s, in the years before and after Northam (or somebody) posed for that photo, Virginia Democrats (who did not yet include Northam, then still a mostly apolitical physician) were not busy practicing divisive racial politics. They were busy congratulating themselves for moving the state into the modern era, chasing away the last ghosts of the Byrd Machine. They saw themselves pushing the state toward a cautious, mild-mannered brand of progressivism that could unify blacks and whites, rural voters and urban. These Democrats wanted to merge the more noble parts of the Virginia tradition with the dynamism and innovation in places like the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington and the booming port at Hampton Roads into an exciting New Dominion.
The most important face of this appealing vision was Chuck Robb, a Wisconsin native transplanted to Virginia. Elected governor in 1981, there was all manner of speculation about his national future as his term came to an end. Among those who bolstered the case that Robb had ushered in a new era in Virginia politics was Wilder, who won his race for lieutenant governor in 1985, putting him on track for his eventual historic ascent to the top job in 1989.
But there was a problem with the Robb-Wilder alliance. These two heroes of a resurgent Democratic Party came to loathe each other. Wilder did not especially respect Robb, and resented his easy stroll into a state where Wilder had lived and battled prejudice for decades. Robb and his advisers considered Wilder an ingrate and were deeply offended by Wilder’s penchant for jabs and putdowns and were determined to put him in his place. Wilder, who loved both the public stage and private intrigue, lovingly cuddled his grievances and was equally invested in payback.
Robb always struck me as a decent if somewhat awkward man, in some ways a bit like Al Gore: How did someone who labored so uncomfortably with the theatrical side of politics choose this as a career? The same question lingers over Northam’s excruciating performances of recent days, including what for a moment (thankfully interrupted by his wife) seemed to be his offer to demonstrate his Michael Jackson “moonwalk” at a Capitol news conference.
Wilder, by contrast, was a natural performer, an electric presence whose refusal to relinquish his resentments or push himself outside his natural habitat of Richmond intrigue robbed him of the outsize role in national politics that by all rights he should have claimed.
Both men compiled impressive records as responsible progressive governors. But both were co-conspirators in shredding Virginia’s image for stolid, sober-minded politicians.
Wilder offended many Old Dominion sensibilities by using the state plane for secret romantic getaways with Patricia Kluge, then married to billionaire John Kluge (himself a top Wilder contributor who for understandable reasons came to regret his choice).
But it was Robb, the straightest of arrows in public, whose private life came to light in even more uncomfortable ways during his competition with Wilder. Unknown to the public at the time, while Robb was governor he left Richmond many weekends without his wife or family to socialize with a fast-lane crowd in Virginia Beach. Some of his fellow revelers had links to organized crime, and some were later convicted for cocaine distribution. Robb said he never saw the stuff much less used it. A former Miss Virginia who posed for Playboy, Tanquil “Tai” Collins, said she had an affair with Robb. He said, “The only person I have ever loved emotionally or physically is my bride.”
When NBC came to town to shine a light on the controversy, including a two-hour interview with Robb, the Richmond Times-Dispatch ran an article by Mike Allen (yes: same guy) describing “questions about toga parties, boozy rubdowns, and hot-tubbing with prostitutes.” In the Washington Post, Howard Kurtz (yes: same guy) asked whether the media had failed in not probing Robb’s private life earlier or whether it was failing currently by publishing “salacious tales” with no relevance to public duties.
This all feels far away now. There was no doubt that allegations of sexual assault and rape toward Fairfax, who initially accused Northam and others of peddling rumors about him, would instantly become national news. And in the years since the time of Wilder and Robb other governors, including George Allen and Robert McDonnell, have had careers marred by uproars over their personal conduct.
Virginia is a state filled with statues everywhere, from Washington and Jefferson to the Confederate leaders towering over Richmond’s Monument Avenue (the latter of which many people now want torn down). For believers in the Virginia mythology, it is an unpleasant surprise to keep learning how its modern leaders are not made of metal or marble but of very frail flesh and blood.
If the premise of Pippa Bianco’s Share feels depressingly familiar – girl wakes up with no memory of the previous night, until video surfaces of her own assault – the film is notable for what it doesn’t do.
It doesn’t show us the full videos Mandy (Rhianne Barreto) received. Nor the hateful comments and texts she started getting afterward. It offers few concrete clues or details about what might have been done to her. It’s not especially interested in the boys who were there that night, or what their motivations might have been.
What it does instead is prioritize Mandy’s subjective experience of the fallout, in all of its confusion and disorientation. Scenes linger in a depressive funk, or cut away at pivotal moments. Others separate sound and image to signal her increasing sense of dissociation. A few even play out like horror movies, minus the cathartic scares.
It’s an alienating and often frustrating watch, and that’s exactly the point: This is what Mandy’s headspace feels like right now. Share makes us live through the emotional fallout with her, with scant possibility of escaping into a broader, more superficially “objective” point-of-view. She is the focus of this story, not her assailant(s) or the crimes committed against her.
In that goal, Share was not alone at this year’s Sundance. Two years after a snowy Women’s March in Park City, the festival presented a slate full of projects that put control of sexual abuse narratives back into the hands of its victims – including one about Harvey Weinstein, himself a former Sundance fixture.
Director Ursula Macfarlane and actress Rosanna Arquette were among those at the Sundance premiere of Untouchable.
Image: Sundance Institute
Untouchable‘s approach to sexual trauma couldn’t be more different from Share‘s, but their goals are simpatico: Both want you to think about the women harmed by these injustices, rather than the men perpetrating them.
The documentary puts Weinstein’s victims in front of the camera to speak for themselves – a powerful gesture in itself, even if the stories themselves are all familiar from the pages of The New Yorker or The New York Times. It can be easy, reading an article, to think of the names in them as abstractions; it’s much harder to deny an individual’s humanity when she’s looking directly at you through the camera with tears in her eyes and a quaver in her voice.
Meanwhile, Weinstein himself gets no say in how he’s portrayed, since he’s never interviewed. So the power rests entirely in the hands of his survivors and his former colleagues and acquaintances – with assistance from director Ursula Macfarlane and her team. Naturally, they’re more interested in plumbing their own experiences than in trying to analyze his.
When Untouchable ends, we’re left thinking about the women he terrorized, the consequences they’ve suffered, the institutions that let them down, the silent victims who haven’t spoken out, the young women and men who might yet be protected if only the rest of us would commit to changing the system. Weinstein recedes from focus. He’s the setting of this movie, not the subject.
It’s a tough needle to thread, and not every film that attempts it is so successful. On paper, Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile seemed to be a narrative feature in a similar vein, revisiting Ted Bundy through the eyes of his girlfriend, Liz (Lily Collins). But the film keeps sidelining her perspective in favor of watching Zac Efron play Bundy’s greatest hits.
By the real Liz’s account, Bundy treated her in ways that could be described as abusive, and even tried to kill her at one point. Yet she stayed with him. Surely there’s a story to be told here about why Liz found Ted so hard to shake, or why other women, like his later girlfriend Carol, were so drawn to him, or what it might feel like to realize that the man you thought you loved was a monster.
Liz becomes the supporting character in what was supposed to be her side of the story.
But Extremely Wicked is too taken with Ted to consider such questions, even though it’s ostensibly from Liz’s point of view. While he soaks in the spotlight, Liz’s emotional arc, which is almost entirely reactive, is largely explained in dialogue, rather than developed organically. Carol and the other women in Ted’s orbit merit even less attention.
The perspective does shift back to Liz in the final moments of the film. She visits Ted in jail, finally taking charge to demand that he admit what he did. But it’s too little, too late. Liz has become the supporting character in what was supposed to be her side of the story.
At least Extremely Wicked tried, I guess. If nothing else, it (along with the companion docuseries, also by director Joe Berlinger) has given us a reason to talk again about our glorification of a literally murderous misogynist, and about true crime’s responsibility to real victims. And those conversations aren’t going away.
Elsewhere at Sundance, the docuseries Lorena and Leaving Neverland reassessed two other major news stories from the not-so-distant past: Lorena Bobbitt’s attack against her husband, and the child molestation accusations against Michael Jackson.
While this reporter has, unfortunately, seen neither, both seem poised to frame those figures in a new light. Bobbitt, once the subject of punchlines, has become the subject of interviews and thinkpieces that reframe her as a survivor of domestic violence. Jackson’s legacy, always hotly debated thanks to the persistent allegations of abuse, seems poised to come up for debate yet again.
These perspectives aren’t entirely new, of course. There have always been stories about women who survived bad men, some shouted from the big screen and some whispered at parties. There are people who understood Bobbitt’s tale as a tragedy from the beginning, and ones who never stopped believing Jackson’s victims.
But these films and shows are of a piece with the awakening that’s occurred over the past couple of years, as mainstream society started to reassess how we see stories about women, power, and abuse. We can’t change what happened to these victims, or guarantee that no one will ever become one again.
We can, however, decide which stories we listen to, and how we listen to them, and how we process them. We can choose to ignore the abusers and focus our energies on the abused instead. And after taking them in, we can decide what we’re going to do next.
New York City – The question of justice has dominated discussions at a New York conference on the persecution suffered by the Rohingya Muslim minority in Myanmar.
Panelists, including international legal experts, Rohingya refugees, members of the diaspora and human rights activists, packed the James Room of Bernard College at Columbia University on Friday an Saturday, calling on the international community to take a collective and decisive action against the Myanmar government.
The Rohingya minority in Myanmar, long considered the most persecuted minority in the world, has faced relentless attacks on lives and property over the last seven years.
In 2017, these attacks left thousands dead and forced more than 700,000 to flee to neighbouring Bangladesh.
‘Demanding justice’
Without the spectre of accountability or justice, the atrocities would simply multiply, according to Tun Khin, President of the Burmese Rohingya Organization UK.
“The people in the [refugee] camps want justice. This is the first thing they told me,” Tun Khin told Al Jazeera on the sidelines of the conference which was organised by the Free Rohingya Coalition (FRC).
“If there is no accountability, the oppression will continue. Why would the military stop if they know there will be no consequences for their actions?
Rohingya crisis: UN warns against repatriation
“And if the Rohingya are to return to Myanmar, their safety has to be guaranteed. We are facing an existential threat.”
Gregory Stanton, from Genocide Watch, told the conference that the Rohingya-minority, who continue to suffer intimidation, murder and displacement, deserved protection, justice and and ultimately reparations.
“Those who have been victims of genocide need reparations so they can resettle their lives,” said Stanton.
“Take their names [of the military officers], gather the evidence … because they will be out in the dock [eventually].”
The call for accountability and justice for what has transpired in the northern Rakhine state of Myanmar is not new.
In August 2018, the UN independent international fact-finding mission released a 440-page account of the situation in three states in Myanmar.
The report called for an “investigation and prosecution of Myanmar’s Commander-in-Chief, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, and his top military leaders for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes”.
Myanmar’s government have repeatedly rejected the allegations in the UN report.
Radhika Coomaraswamy, member of the UN team that wrote up the report, told Al Jazeera that though it was unlikely that the report would move the UN Security Council (UNSC) to refer Myanmar to the International Criminal Court (ICC), the mechanisms were in place for the cases to move forward.
Coomaraswamy, a lawyer and former UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women and UN Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict [Azad Essa/Al Jazeera]
“We have now set up prosecutorial mechanisms that will create prosecutorial files of these generals and others involved and so on,” said Coomaraswamy.
“When it comes to the Security Council, you never know. If there’s sufficient pressure, it can happen,” added Coomaraswamy, a lawyer and former UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women and UN Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict.
The ICC opened a preliminary examination into Myanmar’s crimes against the Rohingya minority in September 2018.
But Stanton, from Genocide Watch, said that even if the prospects of holding officials accountable in an international court were slim, it had to be pursued.
‘Ongoing violence’
In his remarks, via a pre-recorded video-message, Yanghee Lee, the UN special rapporteur for Myanmar, told attendees at the conference that she was troubled to hear reports the Myanmar military were building new bases in the Rakhine state.
“Democratic space, including the freedom of speech and association is ever fragile, and communities across the country remain divided along religious and ethnic lines,” said Lee.
Yasmin Ullahi, a Rohingya activist based in Canada, told Al Jazeera that the Rohingya had effectively lost a generation of children to refugee camps where they will struggle for education, sufficient food, later employment and a stable future.
Tun Khin, the UK-based activist, said that though the conference was focused primarily on the Rohingya minority, it would be amiss of activists to ignore the fact that all minorities faced erasure under the current Myanmar leadership.
“This is not just about the Rohingya. It is about the brutality of all minorities,” he said.
Likewise, Alex Hinton, UNESCO Chair in Genocide Prevention, said that for action to be taken, there needed to be political will.
“There need to be political will. We need to personalize the stories, so that people will taken to action,” Hinton told the attendees.
A number of panelists, including Stanton from Genocide Watch, reserved strong criticism for the role of Facebook, in the dissemination of hate-speech ahead of the events of 2017.
Facebook was criticised for failing to put a halt to the hate speech and for allowing murderous sentiment to spread. Late last year, Facebook admitted they “weren’t doing enough to help prevent our platform from being used to foment division and incite offline violence”.
The Thai Raksa Chart Party in Thailand has cancelled its campaigning plans for the upcoming elections after the king rejected his sister’s candidacy for prime minister.
“Thai Raksa Chart party complies with the royal command”, the party said in a statement sent out to reporters.
Any campaigning for the princess would be suspended as the party assessed its options going ahead, the party, founded by allies of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, said.
“Right now we have to reorganize and we will release a statement shortly concerning our future plans,” a senior party member told dpa news agency requesting anonymity.
The announcement comes only a day after the party put Princess Ubolratana forward as a candidate for the upcoming elections in March.
Thailand is a constitutional monarchy and has not had a royal run for frontline office since 1932.
The move rattled the status quo and threatened the ambitions of the junta that has ruled Thailand since it toppled the administration of Yingluck Shinawatra in a 2014 coup.
Following the announcement, Thai King Maha Vajiralongkorn called his older’s sister’s plans “inappropriate” and unconstitutional.
The king did not criticise the princess directly and seemed to focus blame on political party members who brought her on board.
In a written statement, Vajiralongkorn said Princess Ubolratana is “highly respected by all the royal family members” but that the monarchy in Thailand should remain above politics.
“Her involvement in politics is against the long-standing national tradition and very inappropriate,” the statement said.
The 67-year-old princess did not address the royal rebuke on Saturday morning, when she thanked supporters on her widely followed Instagram account and said vaguely that she wanted Thailand to “move forward”.
The election committee has also not responded to her announcement yet, saying its members would gather on Monday.
Thai Raksa Chart is politically aligned with Yingluck Shinawatra, who was removed from office in 2014 by junta chief Prayut Chan-Ocha, who has also announced he would run for office.
Ubolratana was expected to be one of his main opponents.
Despite being a a constitutional monarchy since 1932, Thailand’s royal family has wielded great influence and commanded the devotion of millions.
The United States and North Korea will have to do “some hard work” in the lead-up to the upcoming US-North Korea leaders’ summit, the top US envoy for North Korea said after holding talks in Pyongyang.
Stephen Biegun held three days of talks in the North Korean capital and agreed to meet his counterpart Kim Hyok Chol again ahead of the summit, the State Department said on Friday.
Speaking before meeting with the South Korean Foreign Minister kang Kyung-wha on Saturday, Biegun said his talks in Pyongyang had been productive, but more dialogue was needed ahead of the summit.
“We have some hard work to do with the DPRK between now and then,” Biegun said in Seoul.
“I am confident that if both sides stay committed, we can make real progress.”
During the talks, Biegun and Kim Hyok Chol “discussed advancing President Trump and Chairman Kim’s Singapore summit commitments of complete denuclearisation, transforming US-DPRK relations, and building a lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula,” the State Department said, referring to North Korea by the acronym for its official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
US President Donald Trump hailed the preparatory talks as “very productive”.
“My representatives have just left North Korea after a very productive meeting and an agreed upon time and date for the second Summit with Kim Jong Un. It will take place in Hanoi, Vietnam, on February 27 & 28,” Trump said in a Twitter post on Friday.
“I look forward to seeing Chairman Kim & advancing the cause of peace!” he said.
Trump had announced the dates for the second summit with Kim on Tuesday, and said it would be held in Vietnam, but the city had not been disclosed.
At their landmark summit in Singapore last year, the US and North Korean leaders produced a vaguely worded document in which Kim pledged to work towards “the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula”.
But progress has since stalled, with the two sides disagreeing over what that means.
Experts say tangible progress on Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons will be needed for the second summit if it is to avoid being dismissed as “reality TV”.
North Korea has yet to provide any official confirmation of the Hanoi summit.
Biegun said last week his Pyongyang talks would be aimed at seeking progress on commitments made in Singapore and mapping out “a set of concrete deliverables” for the second summit.
He said Washington was willing to discuss “many actions” to improve ties and entice Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons and that Trump was ready to end the 1950-53 Korean War, which concluded with an armistice, not a peace treaty.
Stephen Biegun, US envoy for North Korea met with South Korea’s Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha to brief her on his talks with Pyongyang [Ed Jones/Pool via Reuters]
Biegun said Kim Jong Un committed during an October visit by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to the dismantling and destruction of plutonium and uranium enrichment facilities and that “corresponding measures” demanded by North Korea would be the subject of his talks.
At the same time, he set out an extensive list of demands that North Korea would have to meet eventually, including full disclosure of its nuclear and missile programs, something Pyongyang has rejected for decades.
‘Economic powerhouse’
Experts say the most likely scenario in Vietnam is that the concerned parties – North and South Korea, the US, and China – would declare a formal end to the war as a political statement.
They also say Kim is determined to win relief from US-led sanctions to help revive his country’s troubled economy, while Trump, faced with domestic problems such as the investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, wants foreign policy achievements.
In a post on Twitter, Trump said that North Korea would become an “economic powerhouse” under Kim.
“North Korea, under the leadership of Kim Jong Un, will become a great Economic Powerhouse,” Trump tweeted. “He may surprise some but he won’t surprise me, because I have gotten to know him & fully understand how capable he is.”
The US leader announced the plan for his second meeting with Kim in his annual State of the Union address on Tuesday.
He said much work remained to be done in the push for peace with North Korea, but cited the halt in its nuclear testing and no new missile launches in 15 months as proof of progress.
While in the US view North Korea has yet to take concrete steps to give up its nuclear weapons, Pyongyang complains that Washington has done little to reciprocate for its freezing of nuclear and missile testing and dismantling of some facilities.
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia –Leaders from across the continent are in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa city to attend an African Union (AU) summit, hoping to find a way to deal with the displacement crisis the continent is facing.
The mood in the city is upbeat: Flags of all 55 AU member states are fixed to the street lights, and hotels and conference halls are fully booked.
In the city’s Janmeda area – about 15 minutes drive from the AU headquarters – around 50 people are gathered in a compound behind a large white-painted gate manned by security guards.
They are refugees from more than 15 countries.
The compound is run by a charity, Jesuit Refugee Service, and they are gathered to receive food and attend English classes.
The refugees are unaware of the summit and why the leaders are gathered in the city.
“I don’t know what is happening next door, how can I know what is happening somewhere else?,” Haitham Mahi, a refugee from Yemen, told Al Jazeera, as group of young men played table tennis nearby.
Mahdi is one of 20,000 refugees registered in the city, according to the charity, and has been here for seven months after escaping the conflict in Yemen.
“I came from Sanaa. I worked for an oil company. Before the conflict, our lives were very good. Now, it’s very difficult. I prefer to be in my country but it is too dangerous,” said the father-of-two.
Mahdi, 37, volunteers with different charities in the city assisting newly arrived Yemeni refugees find their feet.
Not far from where Mahdi was seating, on a concrete pitch, 20-year-old Aisha Ashuni is shouting at a group of young men standing next to her. They are playing netball and she is the captain.
“I moved from Blue Nile in Sudan seven years ago because of ethnic conflict,” said the soft-spoken Asuni.
“I have been in Addis Ababa for three years now. I have no future here. I’m hoping I will be resettled somewhere else because here I can’t do anything or even go to school,” she added.
Africa has the second highest number of displaced persons in the world, according to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA).
The continent hosts about 37 percent of the world’s 19.6 million refugees and 39.1 million internally displaced people, according to UNECA.
“If we are to put the numbers into perspective, 22 million refugees represent twice the population of Tunisia. It is close to the population of Ivory Coast,” said Vera Songwe, UN Under Secretary General and Executive Secretary of UNECA, in her opening remarks at the summit on Thursday.
Refugees play table tennis as the leaders of the African Union meet seveal kilometres away [Hamza Mohamed/Al Jazeera]
“The GDP of Tunisia today is about $40 billion dollars, twice that is 80 billion dollars,” Songwe added.
Human rights activists say the AU needs to take steps to ensure refugees become part of the mainstream economy in host countries.
“Africa needs to do better in integrating refugees and allowing them to work,” said Achieng Akena, executive director of the Pan African Citizens Network, a civil society group that campaigns for democracy and human rights in Africa.
“Refugees, like other people, need to live a life of dignity. If refugees work, they can contribute to the economy of the host country. Right now, they are just seen as a burden.”
At least one person is forcibly displaced every two seconds around the world as a result of conflict or persecution, according to UNHCR.
Faki Mahamat, the chairperson of the pan-African body, said the AU was looking “to find sustainable responses to the prevalent issue of forced displacement”.
“We must act more effectively on conflicts and crises whose outbreak or persistence is the primary cause of forced displacement of persons,” Mahamat said during his speech to the summit.
“The objective of our leaders to rid the continent of the scourge of armed conflict by 2020 is certainly ambitious, but its realisation is not impossible if there is political will.” he added.
For the refugees gathered in Janmeda, they can only hope and pray that the leaders gathered so close to them can bring the conflicts in their home countries to an end.
“I want to go back home and finish my studies. Then I want to become a politician so I can make a difference in my country.” said Asuni, the 20-year-old Sudanese refugee.
The return of Anthony Davis to the lineup Friday carried the New Orleans Pelicans to a 122-117victory over the Minnesota Timberwolves.
After sitting out the previous nine games with a sprained left finger and awaiting resolution to histraderequest, Davis was given a chilly receptionfrom fans at the Smoothie King Center.
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Davis was able to compartmentalize that reaction to finish with 32 points on 11-of-15 shooting and nine rebounds in just 25 minutes. He didn’t play at all in the fourth quarter. Jrue Holiday added 27 points and dished out nine assists.
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Karl-Anthony Towns matched Davis’ total of 32 points in defeat. The Timberwolves star also had eight rebounds and three assists. Andrew Wiggins posted his first double-double since Jan. 25 with 23 points and 10 rebounds.
Anthony Davis’ Dominant Return Underscores Need for Trade to Contender
The reaction from Pelicans fans toward Davis is easy to understand, though their anger is aimed in the wrong direction.
Davis is in his seventh season in New Orleans. The franchise has won one playoff series in two postseason appearances since he arrived in 2012-13. He was an unstoppable force Friday night despite not playing a game in three weeks.
Brian Mahoney @briancmahoney
The guy has 30 points in less than 2 1/2 quarters and hasn’t even been playing. Pelicans will eventually have to accept one, but there really is no offer good enough for him. https://t.co/HHwxOBsvyA
The Pelicans have never figured out how to build a roster around Davis to help them join the Western Conference’s elite teams. They let players like Eric Gordon and DeMarcus Cousins leave as free agents coming off injury-plagued seasons.
Perhaps because the Pelicans were often unable to reel in top-tier free agents, general manager Dell Demps fell into the habit of giving big-money contracts to players whose performance doesn’t justify that kind of investment.
After averaging 6.0 points and 3.1 rebounds in three seasons as a reserve for the Indiana Pacers, Solomon Hill received afour-year dealworth $48 million in July 2016.
Signing Hill came after New Orleans gave Omer Asik $60 million over five years the previous summer. Asik has played a total of 117 games since signing that contract, though the Pelicans were able to unload him in a February 2018 trade with the Chicago Bulls.
Since the Pelicans aren’t a free-agent destination, building through the draft would seem vital to their success. The last first-round pick they made was Buddy Hield in 2016. He was flipped to the Sacramento Kings in February 2017 as part of the Cousins trade.
Davis is the most recent first-round draft pick made by the Pelicans who is still on their roster.
After his trade request became public last month, Davistold reporters Feb. 1 he wants to maximize his talent for a team capable of winning a championship.
“You don’t know how long you’ll play this game,” Davis said. “Feel like I’m in my prime and playing at an elite level. I want to take advantage of that.”
Friday was a perfect illustration of what the Pelicans are going to be at their best as presently constructed. Davis is unguardable when he’s playing at full strength. Holiday is the perfect complementary piece with his ability to score and get Davis the ball in the post.
But even though the Pelicans put Davis back in the lineup, his lack of minutes—particularly in the fourth quarter when the game was close—seems to indicate the team doesn’t really want to have him out there.
Michael Lee @MrMichaelLee
This Anthony Davis situation is embarrassing for him, the Pelicans & the NBA. Either he’s a part of the team or he’s not. Either he plays/competes to help them win games or he doesn’t. Going halfway doesn’t do anyone any favors. Feels like a waste of his talents & our time.
Players are always going to come off as the bad guy when they request a trade from their team, but the Pelicans have failed Davis during his time with the franchise. He has been one of the NBA‘s elite players for seven seasons with nothing to show for it.
In this era of sports, where players are often defined by their legacy and how many championships they won, Davis is at an age where he needs to start thinking about doing what’s in his best interest.
Being able to secure a trade to a contender, presumably this summer, is the only way for Davis’ time in New Orleans to end. It will allow the franchise to get a fresh start with potentially multiple pieces in place to stay afloat in the Western Conference while also adding draft picks to fill out a roster the way they’ve never been able to with Davis.
What’s Next?
The Timberwolves will host the Los Angeles Clippers on Monday at 8 p.m. ET. The Pelicans will go on the road to play the Memphis Grizzlies on Saturday at 8 p.m. ET.
It turns out New Orleans Pelicans fans haven’t taken too kindly to Anthony Davis’ desire to leave their team.
Returning to the lineup for the first time since Jan. 18, Davis was overwhelmingly booed by Pelicans fans at the Smoothie King Center prior to Friday’s game against the Minnesota Timberwolves:
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The news wasn’t all bad for Davis, though. ESPN’s Michael C. Wright noted the six-time All-Star heard cheers when he put the ball in the basket:
“Talk about awkward. Every time Anthony Davis touches the ball, he’s booed. But when he’s pouring in those buckets like the two he’s scored in the first quarter, everybody cheers loudly; especially on his last make, a nasty step-back jumper. New Orleans’ pre-game hype video included Davis this time, though. And when he was announced in the starting lineup, there was a mixture of cheers and boos. Clearly, this is a somewhat divided or confused fan base here at the Smoothie King Center. It’s been a wild ride since news of Davis’ trade demands surfaced.”
Despite requesting a trade from the Pelicans last month, Davis will finish this season with the team after Thursday’s deadline passed without a deal materializing.
This is certainly an uncomfortable situation for Davis and the Pelicans to find themselves in. It’s going to make for an awkward two months of games, but both sides will have to work through it to salvage something from what’s been a disappointing 2018-19 campaign for New Orleans.
Daily Trends Hunter 